Department of Anesthesiology, Harvard Medical School, Brigham & Women's Hospital, Pain Management Center, 850 Boylston St, Suite 302, Chestnut Hill, MA, 02467, USA.
Fielding Graduate University, Santa Barbara, CA, USA.
BMC Womens Health. 2022 Jun 30;22(1):267. doi: 10.1186/s12905-022-01840-9.
The COVID-19 pandemic has strongly influenced psychological and physical health worldwide. The aim of this study was to examine the impact of the pandemic on women with fibromyalgia.
This mixed methods pilot study explored measures of pain severity and interference, as well as pain catastrophizing and level of fibromyalgia impact among women with fibromyalgia before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in the USA. Fibromyalgia patients completed demographic, pain-related, and other validated psychosocial questionnaires prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and then were re-assessed with those questionnaires, as well as a pandemic-related questionnaire assessing the impact of the pandemic on the patients' life, during the pandemic.
When comparing data reported before the pandemic to data collected 3-6 months into the pandemic, women with fibromyalgia reported a general worsening of their pain and pain-related symptoms. During the pandemic, pain catastrophizing (p ≤ 0.05) and fibromyalgia impact (p ≤ 0.05) increased significantly compared to before the pandemic. The increase in pain catastrophizing scores was highly correlated with the impact of the pandemic on the participants' ability to cope with pain and on their mental health. Qualitative analysis corroborated the significant impact of the pandemic on patients' mental health, with the vast majority reporting a worsening of their mood. Other impacted domains included anxiety, level of activity and sleep.
Collectively, the pandemic appears to have produced a substantive worsening of pain-related symptomatology among women with fibromyalgia, which should be addressed by targeted interventions.
COVID-19 大流行对全球的心理和身体健康产生了强烈影响。本研究旨在探讨大流行对纤维肌痛女性的影响。
这项混合方法的初步研究探讨了美国女性纤维肌痛患者在 COVID-19 大流行之前和期间，疼痛严重程度和干扰程度、疼痛灾难化和纤维肌痛影响程度的测量值。纤维肌痛患者在 COVID-19 大流行之前完成了人口统计学、与疼痛相关的和其他经过验证的心理社会问卷，然后在大流行期间使用这些问卷以及评估大流行对患者生活影响的大流行相关问卷重新进行评估。
与大流行前报告的数据相比，患有纤维肌痛的女性在大流行期间普遍报告疼痛和与疼痛相关的症状恶化。在大流行期间，疼痛灾难化（p≤0.05）和纤维肌痛影响（p≤0.05）与大流行前相比显著增加。疼痛灾难化评分的增加与大流行对参与者应对疼痛能力和心理健康的影响高度相关。定性分析证实了大流行对患者心理健康的重大影响，绝大多数患者报告情绪恶化。其他受影响的领域包括焦虑、活动水平和睡眠。
总体而言，大流行似乎使纤维肌痛女性的与疼痛相关的症状明显恶化，应通过针对性干预加以解决。
